About this blog

This blog is about the history of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp and neighbouring areas, such as Pakenham, Cranbourne and Garfield, and any other historical subjects I feel like writing about. It's my own original research and writing and if you live in the area you may have read some of the stories before in the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Historical Society newsletter or the Koo-Wee-Rup township newsletter, The Blackfish, or the Garfield township newsletter, The Spectator. Heather Arnold.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tynong & District Coursing Club

A meeting was held in late August 1941 to
form the Tynong & District Coursing Club. The President was Peter Gleeson
and the Secretary was Ernest Oram. Peter Gleeson was a farmer at Tynong and
Ernest Oram was the storekeeper at Tynong
I am unfamiliar with grey hound racing,
but apparently a Coursing Club conducts plumpton meetings where two
greyhounds compete on a straight track and are released from a set of slips
instead of a starting box.

In the March of 1942 the newly formed club
was allocated the rights to conduct the classic coursing events – the Derby and
the Oaks. The report in The Argus, said that the Tynong
Club has practically completed the building of a magnificent enclosure on a
site distant a mile from the town. The course was on the Gleeson property on the
Eleven Mile Road, near the corner of the Nine Mile Road (the Tynong-Cora Lynn
Road) near where Gleeson Road adjoins the Eleven Mile Road, today. The opening
meeting was held on May 16, 1942. The events included an All aged stakes, two Bitch Puppy stakes, two Dog Puppy stakes and a
Maiden stake.
The All Aged stake was won by Palm Grove, owned by Rupert Colliver, a neighbour of
the Gleesons.

Various other meetings were held in 1942,
including the Derby in July and the President’s Cup meeting in August. The
prize for this event was a Cup plus £25, a fairly substantial prize, the
equivalent of about one month’s wages. The Club also raised money for the Red
Cross and by October 1942 had raised £200.

In 1943, the Tynong Club won the right to host
the Waterloo Cup. The first Waterloo Cup was conducted in 1873 and the event is
still being held, in fact the 2011 and 2012 Waterloo Cups were conducted at the
Lang Lang Coursing track. The 1943 event took place over two Saturdays on July
31 and August 7. It was won by Keep
Elert, defeating Air Flash, and the prize was £250 pounds, plus a Cup.

There are reports about races throughout the
1940s and the Tynong Club appears to have grown in status fairly quickly, in fact
it was reported in the Gippsland
Times of September 19, 1946 that the Sale Club
aims to take some Tynong glory and get a
classic such as the St Ledger, Oaks, Derby or the blue ribbon event of plumpton
coursing, the Waterloo Cup. It failed
to get the Waterloo Cup as Tynong hosted it again in 1947 and also in 1954. The
1954, the Cup was won by Byamee, who is in the Greyhound Hall of Fame for
winning the event from 1953 to 1955.

An article in The Argus of February 17, 1954 talked about grey hound racing in general and the
fact the Victorian Government was legislating to bring in ‘tin hare
racing’. I presume that previous to
this, live hares were used as the lure. There had been reports in various
papers on Trovehttp://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaperabout
community groups conducting ‘hare drives’ and bagging hares to be sent to the
Tynong Coursing Club. The article also said that grey hound racing was at the cross roads and in the doldrums and that it
had been unwise to change the venue of classics, such as the Waterloo Cup, and hold it in places that had
insufficient accommodation ...or accommodation unfit to house a
greyhound, let alone humans. I don’t know if that referred to Tynong, but
it was a fairly isolated course, with the nearest accommodation being the
Garfield, Nar Nar Goon or Pakenham Hotels.

In June 1955, Mr M. A. Cunningham, the treasurer
of the Club, collected the major prize money for his four entries at the Tynong
Club meeting. In fact, one of his dogs,
Belabek, left the crowd flabbergasted, when it won by 12 lengths. The
last line in the article was Fielders [bookmakers] said it was
one of the worst days they had seen this season. The Tynong Coursing Club was still going in May 1956, but Dad thinks it
didn’t go on for much longer after that.

About Me

I am the Local History Librarian at at Public Library Service in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne. I am also the President of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Historical Society, the secretary of the South Eastern Historical Association and the Trafalgar Truck Restorers Club.